Valdimar Sigurdsson

Reykjavík University · Department of Business Administration

Although the literature establishes the importance of pricing in relation to traditional retailers and e-commerce, few studies consider its importance in social commerce. This study uses eye tracking to examine observational behavior as fixation time on price and the total fixation time on a Facebook page that displays clothing products. This study...

Airbnb is an online marketplace for peer-to-peer accommodation rental services. In contrast to traditional rental services, personal profile images, i.e. the sellers’ facial images, are present along with the housing on offer. This study aims to investigate the impact of a seller’s facial image and their expression upon buyers’ behavior in this con...

Increased fish consumption can contribute to a more sustainable food system. This paper explores how signaling affects consumer choices in fresh fish purchasing situations, both in traditional and online retail settings. We examined two different types of market signals; quality signals stemming from consumers as a social proof and authority signal...

Abstract Research on in-store behavior has largely focused on shoppers with carts. In a study involving 15 stores and a total of 3,540 shoppers, we document that only 20 percent of shoppers actually use shopping carts, while 28 percent use baskets and 51 percent use no carrying equipment. To better understand the role of carrying equipment, we coll...

The effectiveness of eco-labels has dominated research on food signaling. Building on signaling theory, we investigate the impact of sustainability tags–unverified sustainability claims–compared to eco-labels–actual awarded eco-certificates–on consumer choice and the willingness to pay (WTP). We add to the underdeveloped “non eco-labels” literature...

Climate change and the advent of artificial intelligence‐generated content are reshaping wine marketing. The interplay between consumer focus on naturalness and sustainable farming practices and the proliferation of artificial intelligence‐generated content represents a particularly salient area of research. However, the extent to which the presenc...

Detachment from nature is contributing to the environmental crisis and reversing this trend requires detailed monitoring and targeted interventions to reconnect people to nature. Most tools measuring nature exposure and attachment were developed in high-income countries and little is known about their robustness across national and linguistic group...

Whereas the environmental impact of buying luxury goods is debated, there is evidence that purchasing such products-often referred to as conspicuous consumption-can be more sustainable than hoarding cheaper alternatives because luxury goods are more durable and are often passed down through generations, resulting in fewer resources being consumed b...

The current paper contributes to signalling theory by demonstrating the importance of digital quality signals in influencing consumer preferences for sales and segmentation in the context of marketing fresh fish online. We conducted a choice-based conjoint analysis with a latent class segmentation to analyse the significance of digital quality sign...

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in consumer products present a global health concern. Yet, the understanding of consumer perceptions of EDC-related product labels is limited. This study investigated consumer reactions to such labels using data from 602 Scandinavian consumers. The results indicate a positive association between label performan...

The present study presents results of a collaborative registered replication of Griskevicius et al.’s (2010) findings from Experiment 1 conducted by 24 student groups from six countries (N = 3,774) investigating if pro-environmental behavior can be promoted by inducing status motives. Student projects were part of the Collaborative Replication and...

This current research contributes to the concept of consumer-based food label equity (CBFLE) by testing the predictive validity of a scale developed by Coderre et al. (2022) in the sustainability and health domains of seafood products. In Study 1 (N = 301; between-within subjects), we found that scores on all subscales, except the (Dis)honesty subs...

Current research in food science has explored the influence of front-of-package (FOP) labeling systems on consumer decision-making, yielding mixed results. We suggest that these inconsistent findings regarding FOP labeling effectiveness stem from a failure to consider a pivotal individual-level variable: consumer susceptibility to FOP labeling (CSF...

The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset – with data collected between 2020 and 2022 – to asse...

Though firms are making substantial investments in the customer journey (CJ), the return on these investments remains tenuous, yielding a critical need for enhanced CJ-related accountability. Addressing this gap, we develop the concept of ‘customer journey value’ (CJV), defined as the perceived value of a customer’s journey to the customer and the...

Humans have a motivational system that influences cognition and behavior to minimize the risk of contact with pathogens. This research examines the relationship between cyberspace disease salience and mobility behavior at the macro and micro levels. Across two studies, we predict and find that people adjust their mobility behavior to minimize the r...

Shopping carts, in general, should be suitable for carrying smart technology in the retail store environment. Also, a smart shopping cart can present verbal motivating stimuli to increase healthier food purchases. A conjoint experiment was used to test with a hypothetical purchasing task for young consumers (n=91) the potential of motivating stimul...

Introduction Unhealthy food consumption is a problem for society, companies, and consumers. This study aims to contribute to knowledge regarding such issues by investigating how technology-enabled healthy food labels can impact food choice in an online grocery store context. We conceptualized unhealthy and healthy food choice as a matter of impulsi...

Despite growing insight into customers' brand experience, its effect on brand evangelism, or a customer's intense brand support behavior, remains tenuous, exposing an important literature-based gap. Addressing this gap, we adopt a Service-Dominant logic/Consumer Culture Theory perspective to uncover how customers' brand experience dimensions drive...

Purpose – This study examines the role of service customers’ variety-seeking and engagement in driving their service switching intention. We also explore the moderating role of customer relationship proneness in this association. Design/methodology/approach – To test the hypotheses, we deployed a sample of 227 service customers, whose data was anal...

Academia and business have shown an increased interest in using neurophysiological methods, such as eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG), to assess consumer motivation. The current research contributes to this literature by verifying whether these methods can predict the effects of antecedent events as motivating functions of attention, ne...

As a result of the increased crowding of the retail landscape with health and sustainability signals and hundreds of different certifications and claims, there is a growing need to determine the critical success factors and guidelines for professional practice. The current paper investigates how different combinations of signals impact consumers’ c...

Since retailers control the space where consumers tend to make the vast majority of their food purchase decisions, they can take measures to promote healthy living. Increasing relative sales of healthy food can contribute to the ongoing battle against preventable lifestyle diseases. We show how retailers can use impression management and environmen...

Purpose This study investigates the mediating role of consumer engagement (CE) in the relationship between perceived behavioral control (PBC) and purchase intent and the moderating role of perceived safety in the relationship between PBC and CE in the self-driving car (SDC) context. Design/methodology/approach To test the model, a sample of 368 co...

Extant research has found that the addition of vegetables to a meal induces a “health halo,” thereby lowering the perceived calorie content of the entire dish. We investigated whether environmental stimuli that convey naturalness could trigger such a halo effect. Specifically, we tested whether meals accompanied by a natural, as opposed to an urban...

The growing use of mobile technologies is spawning firms’ adoption of mobile relationship-building techniques, including via mobile apps. However, despite the rapid rise of these technologies, little remains known regarding consumers’ mobile app- (vs. desktop browser) related behaviours, and this is therefore investigated in this paper. Specificall...

This paper explores the impact of health communication using smartphones and the outcome of healthier purchases when young Thai consumers shop for groceries. A conjoint experiment was arranged whereby participants (n = 214) purchased grocery using information conveyed via quick response (QR) codes. Results show that a healthy food label, and a good...

Prior research has established the key impact of customers' Big Five personality traits (e.g., agreeableness/conscientiousness) on their brand engagement, suggesting that individuals exhibiting differing personality traits engage differently with brands. In parallel, extending influential customer engagement research, stakeholder engagement, which...

The calorie content of food plays a pivotal role in shaping consumers’ food choices. Previous research indicates that consumers often base their calorie judgments of food on seemingly superficial cues present in the environment in which they make their evaluations. For example, the addition of vegetables to a meal induces a “health halo,” thereby l...

As a result of the increased crowding of the retail landscape with health and sustainability signals and hundreds of different certifications and claims, there is a growing need to determine the critical success factors and guidelines for professional practice. The current paper investigates how different combinations of signals impact consumers’ c...

Humans have a motivational system that influences cognition and behavior to minimize the risk of contact with pathogens whenever cues to disease emerge. The current research examines the relationship between cyberspace disease salience and mobility behavior at the macro and micro levels. Across three studies, we predict and find that people adjust...

Prior research primarily considers consumers' hedonic gaming experience, defined as an individual's level of pleasure, emotional gratification, and enjoyment from playing a videogame, from a unidimensional perspective. However, given the growing range of technology-enabled, hedonic game-related (e.g., aesthetic, competition, or social) elements, we...

Principally a result of unhealthy food choices, almost half of adults worldwide are overweight or obese. Current food retail practices bear some responsibility for such public health issues. We argue that numerous attempts to promote healthy eating have been unsuccessful for failing to account for our outdated evolved food selection mechanisms. Bui...

Despite important strides made in the business model literature, substantially less is known regarding its constituent sub-concept of business model innovation (BMI). In particular, the role and dynamics of different stakeholders’ BMI-related engagement remain nebulous, as therefore explored in this paper. Moreover, though business models are recog...

Following the proliferation of customer engagement behavior research, rising interest is observed in marketing-based stakeholder engagement behavior, which covers any stakeholder's—including a customer's, employee's, firm's, supplier's, competitor's, and so forth—behavioral engagement in his/her role-related interactions, activities, and relationsh...

Purpose – This study investigates the mediating role of consumer engagement (CE) in the relationship between perceived behavioral control (PBC) and purchase intent and the moderating role of perceived safety in the relationship between PBC and CE in the self-driving car (SDC) context. Design/methodology/approach – To test the model, a sample of 36...

Winter cues signal a scarcity of food. Birds and mammals respond to such environmental cues by consuming more energy. They convert this surplus into body fat that serves as a buffer against impending food shortages. Similarly, humans exhibit higher obesity rates among food-insecure populations. However, to date, it has been unclear whether winter c...

Dissatisfied customers often use social media to voice their complaints effectively, and firms strive to find solutions about how to respond to publicly visible service failure posts. We add to the emerging literature on complaint handling via social media by examining how complaining customers on a company's Facebook page prefer to be treated. We...

Mass media extensively inform societies about events threatening the global food supply (e.g., pandemics or Brexit). Consumers exposed to such communication may perceive food resources as becoming scarcer. In line with an evolutionary account, these perceptions can shift decision-making in domains such as food preferences or prosociality. However,...

Principally due to unhealthy food choices that people make in grocery stores, almost half of adults worldwide are overweight and obese. Current food retail practices bear some responsibility for such public health issues. This paper argues that numerous attempts to promote healthy eating fail due to neglecting evolutionarily outdated food acquisiti...

Winter cues signal a scarcity of food. Birds and mammals respond to such environmental cues by consuming more energy. They convert this surplus into body fat that serves as a buffer against impending food shortages. Similarly, humans exhibit higher obesity rates among food-insecure populations. However, to date, it has been unclear whether winter c...

This study focuses on the representativeness heuristic effects of healthy food labels on consumer choice of healthy food. A within-subject experiment was arranged to identify whether consumers rely on representativeness heuristics when making a series of choices of food. Determining whether healthy food labels bias their choice under these limitati...

Whereas large-scale consumption of energy-dense foods contributes to climate change, we investigated whether exposure to climate change-induced food scarcity affects food preferences toward these foods. Humans' current psychological mechanisms have developed in their ancestral evolutionary past to respond to immediate threats and opportunities. Con...

Principally a result of unhealthy food choices, almost half of adults worldwide are overweight or obese. Current food retail practices bear some responsibility for such public health issues. We argue that numerous attempts to promote healthy eating have been unsuccessful for failing to account for our outdated evolved food selection mechanisms. Bui...

The accurate delineation of various forms of business organization requires a comparative analysis of their objectives, functions, and organizational structures. In particular, this paper highlights differences in managerial work between business firms and non-profits exemplified by the charitable organization. It adopts as its template the theory...

Self-service kiosks are increasingly being used in situations where a person is out to buy food and/or drinks. Several cause-related marketing initiatives have capitalized on using self-service technology to include small donation requests at the point of purchase. In this context, it is highly likely that during such purchase situations, a person...

While overconsumption of energy-dense foods contributes to climate change, we investigated whether exposure to climate change-induced food insecurity affects preferences toward such products. Humans’ current psychological mechanisms have developed in their ancestral evolutionary past to respond to immediate threats and opportunities. Consequently,...

Events such as trade wars or pandemics pose a threat to the global food supply chain. As a result, people may perceive food resources as less secure. These perceptions, in turn, can shift decision-making in various domains such as food preferences, financial risk-taking, or prosocial behaviors. The food insecurity literature to date has extensively...

This special section of the Perspectives on Behavior Science focuses on health, technology, and behavior science. The aim is to provide reviews and empirical research that integrates the latest technological innovations and behavior science. The selected articles are categorized into contributions in which technology is used to study health-related...

While virtual reality's importance is increasingly recognized in marketing, its role in the customer journey remains nebulous. We define virtual reality through the customer journey (VRCJ) as firms' use of computer-mediated interactive environments capable of offering sensory feedback to engage consumers, strengthen consumer/brand relationships, an...

In this study, we use the theory of the marketing firm to explain marketing relationships between consumers and firms selling fish in the context of developing the e-commerce sector for the fishery industry. We use a unique dataset composed of quantitative and qualitative data to provide a behavioral economic analysis and interpretation. The result...

Healthy food labels are a widely used form of intervention that nudges consumers towards healthier choices. This study investigates the relative importance of healthy food labels on the consumers’ online choice of grocery. A conjoint study (n=111) shows that price, brand, and country of origin had a relatively higher impact on choice than health fo...

Dietary choices are one of the main drivers of preventable health issues such as obesity or diabetes. Food choice is a complex behavior that is hard to measure with traditional, paper, and pencil-based methods. Neuro-Information Systems (NeuroIS) research is well suited to examine neurophysiological and psychophysiological processes behind complex...

This study investigates the impact of Internet of Things (IoT) services from a smartphone app in a retail grocery shopping situation. It examines four variables, namely price, expiry date, quality indicators and offers. All four variables were examined in relation to two levels; traditional information and IoT services. A scenario was arranged wher...

This study empirically investigates the marketer and customer's co‐creation process within the context of the marketing firm. Based on principles from bilateral contingencies, findings from a conjoint study (n = 98) indicate that utilitarian and informational reinforcing consequences from the marketer have a stronger impact on customers' co‐creatio...

This article discusses the marketer and customer co‐creation process within the context of bilateral contingencies. Bilateral contingencies occur when the marketers' behavior is reinforced (and/or punished) by the customers' behavior, whereas the behavior of the customers is reinforced (and/or punished) by the marketers' actions. Using the example...

Social media platforms constitute a new frontline for brands to build relationships with their customers. Nevertheless, the literature on social media engagement behavior is unidimensional, as it focuses on customer engagement while neglecting the customer's influence on managerial decisions. The current paper goes a step further by applying the th...

This study analyzes online customer reviews in order to investigate customers' preferences regarding cosmetic products. Based on the marketing firm theory, this research explores the possibility of enhancing the bilateral contingent relationships between the customer and the marketing firm within the cosmetics domain. Hence, this study applies mark...

Efficiency has emerged as an important consumer value and thus has increased the importance of the in‐store search as one facet of consumer transaction costs. This paper contributes to the development of a marketing theory of the firm by analyzing the consumers' in‐store efficiency ratios and the retailers' natural sources of resistance to offer ef...

Airlines are increasingly using social media for initiating and sustaining consumer brand engagement through interaction and sharing. This study introduces a conceptual model on brand post engagement on social media and contributes to extant knowledge on the effectiveness of the determinants of such engagement in the airline industry. Facebook bran...

A within-subject experiment design aimed to identify whether participants rely on heuristics when making a series of choices of healthy food. Determining whether healthy food labels bias their choice under these conditions was of particular interest. Results (n=30) showed that participants tend to develop a heuristic in a series of healthy food cho...

Internet of Things (IoT) presents an opportunity for retailers to develop an environment that makes physical things such as mobile phone, shopping basket, store shelves, digital display, and even the product itself smart, allowing real-time interaction with customers. This study aims to expand understanding of how IoT can influence healthy choice i...

Shopping carts, dating back at least to 1936, are not only used as an aid for shoppers to increase sales but are now being further developed and tested in relation to healthy food selection. To improve retailers’ ability to discover, generate, and capture the value related to both current practice and future innovations; such as consumers using sma...

This article responds to a call for research on the context-specific effects of human images in different online contexts. This study investigates how inherent facial expressions in a consultant’s profile image influence the likelihood to contact tendency of small business-to-business website visitors. The results from a conjoint study (n = 67) dem...

This study aims to investigate the influence of a male and female sellers´ profile image and its expressions on the choices made by the peer user within the context of peer-to-peer accommodation rental. We arranged a scenario in which participants evaluated their likelihood to rent an apartment on Airbnb. Results of the conjoint study (r = 0.967, p...

Mobile apps show a heavy usage pattern and compelling growth figures. This study seeks to examine consumers' attitudes toward in-mobile advertisements in terms of mobile advertising value. The samples are from the United Kingdom (UK) and India because the nationals of these countries exhibit a high degree of dissimilarity in a number of Hofstede's...

There is a request for research to examine consumer-purchasing behavior in online grocery retailing. By definition, behavior includes both cognition and observable responses. Neuro-Information Systems (NeuroIS) is a framework that offers a reliable measurement of consumer behavior, through direct observation of the brain using neuroscientific techn...

This study aims to expand understanding of the impact of content in social media advertisements building on the behavior analytic concept of rule-governed behavior. The experiment also gives insights into applied behavior analysis in social media and especially to drug prophylaxis as the study was done in collaboration with a counseling service usi...

The impact of subtle environmental factors on choice can be understood through the prism of behavioral economics, whereas the variations of marketing attributes and impact on choice can be measured using conjoint analysis. Using a behavioral conjoint approach, we conducted several reinforcement value maximization and trade-off analyses in an online...

The rapidly changing digital environment has redefined the way most companies interact with their customers. With consumers increasingly adopting digital technologies, a successful digital marketing strategy requires a thorough understanding of how and why consumers behave as they do. The purpose of the study is to explore the possibility of unders...

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology presents an opportunity for retail groceries to develop an infrastructure that makes physical things such as mobile phone, shopping basket, store shelves, digital display, and, even the product itself smart, allowing real-time interaction with customers both in the physical store and in the virtual store. The...

The impact of complex environmental factors on consumer choices and preferences can be analyzed through the prism of consumer behavior analysis, whereas variations of marketing attributes and their impact on choice can be measured using conjoint analysis. Considering the case of the constantly growing online food selections, we discuss choice-based...

The store is the main laboratory for in-store experimental analysis. This article provides an introduction to a research program aimed at improving research practices in this laboratory, particularly emphasizing the importance of behavioral data and the new opportunities that technology offers. This complex modern-day Skinner box has sets of well-s...